Karos Online is offering all its players a 10% experience boost to all monsters killed is celebration of the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. The event will run from last Friday, June 4th until Thursday, June 10th. The experience bonus will stack with other experience boosting items as well, making these six days a great time for leveling your character. More information is available on the Karos Online website.

Karos Online is a free-to-play MMORPG, set in a fantasy world of Asmara. The game was developed by the Korean studio Galaxy Gate and is ported by NHN, the people behind the popular game portal ijji. While Karos may not be very innovative, the game offers a very clean and addicting gameplay that most players can enjoy in peace. If you are asking whether you should try to game or not, this Karos Online review should answer your questions.

Asmara

The world of Karos Online is stunning, to say the least. And not just graphic wise – the design is also breath taking and makes up for a unique experience in Asmara. Karos offers three playable races in total – Humans, Seroines and Shadows. The race of the humans doesn’t need any introductions. The second race, the seroines, is just a renamed version of the classical light elfs – pointy ears, unique hair color, love for nature.. As for the shadows – they are the game’s equivalent to dark elfs. But while this whole thing sounds promising, the character creation is a bit of a let down. Your options for customization are very limited and so is your choice for race/class/gender. Bladers and Rogues are male only classes while Mystic, Bowmistress, Paladin and Sorceress are female exclusives. That’s it, you can’t have a female Blader or a male Mystic.

First steps

Karos Online has serious problems with its basic guide. Its way too minimalistic and seems to have a mind of its own – it pops up whenever it wants. So my advice would be not to waste nerves on it and just turn it off, using the one on the website instead. But even considering the clunky guide, Karos makes a very smooth appearance and getting the hang of its mechanics is simple and requires little effort. The controls are standard – you can use both your keyboard and the mouse. But there is a catch here as well – the keyboard control is way too awkward and not handy enough. The interface is very clean and intuitive – you won’t have much trouble finding anything. It’s the lack of direction that may cause troubles for newbie players.

Combat

If there is one negative thing about the combat system of the game, it’s how slow it is. Half of the blame goes to the lack of HP/MP regeneration while in battle, but even if that gets a fix the battle pace is still slow. If you can get over that, you’ll find the classical combat mechanics known to most gamers. The battles are pretty tight, so any mistake could be your last. But the best advice I could give anyone who seeks to approach this game is – take any quest you can. This will help you level much faster than if you just keep on grinding and a large portion of the quests can be completed more than once, meaning you will always have at least one task to take care of.

Game Mechanics

Karos Online adds a few extras to the classical formula. The first one is the Fletta system. Fletta are permanent buffs, one for each element. Every time your Fletta point progress bar reaches 100% you will receive a Fletta point to invest. The game has a pretty solid crafting system, a fishing system and a mining system. Each one is pretty simple, but manages to deliver a much needed break from the grinding. And speaking of grinding – Karos has lots of it. Some may even call it a grindfest, which is partly true. All and all, Karos Online’s gameplay mechanics are pretty standard and solid.

PvP

PvP is the other key component of the game and it deals pretty well on that paragraph. PvP is not the right word actually, PK is more like it. Once you reach level 10 you can enable player kill mode, which will allow you to kill other players. But don’t think you can just kill whoever you want – player killing is punished by the moral system of the game. By killing others your moral value drops to a point where you will no longer have access to towns and you will be attacked by guards. But you can raise the moral bar again by just killing monsters. Karos also offers two other ways of PvP, which are not so direct – guild wars and mine takeovers. The first one we’ve all seen – you fight other player guilds. But the second one was obviously inspired by RF Online – you fight another player guild for domination over a mine and all its resources.

Technical details

I already mentioned how beautiful and well designed the world of Karos is, but you just have to see it. The character models look great, animations are well done, particle effects are simple but pleasant. The engine of the game isn’t very advanced but does its job perfectly. Now is the time to mention that every bit of the graphics are showered in bloom effects, which for some may be a plus but others may not approve it. As for the music – the background tracks are a joy and are really adequately placed. The only negative about the whole soundtrack of the game are the terrible character voices.

The end

Even with all its flaws and bugs, Karos Online is a great hardcore MMORPG. Fans of PvP-oriented grindfests like Lineage 2 should consider downloading the game, though casual players may find it being way too masochistic. The balance could use a bit of tweaking, controls need fixing, duels should be implemented, but thankfully none of the problems of the game are big enough to turn away anyone determined to join Asmara.

Karos Online open beta begins today, Dec 4th 2009.    Karos Online is a free to play fantasy MMORPG being developer by Galaxy Quest, which is set to be release before the years end.  Although the open beta is scheduled to end on Dec 31st, so most likely the game will not be released until January.

During this open beta phase players will receive prizes for participating which are listed below.  We received some closed beta keys last week for their final phase of closed beta testing, so if you didn’t get a change to snag on of those keys, here’s your chance to play the game in open beta.

Referring friends: From the start of open beta, players will be able to invite their friends to play Karos Online via the official website. For every five friends who join the game and reach level 5, the referring player will receive a reward, as follows:

• Five friends will award the player 10 Strength Potions
• Ten friends will award the player 3 Weapon Enchant Scrolls and 3 Armor Enchant Scrolls
• Twenty friends will award the player 5 Weapon Enchant Scrolls and 5 Armor Enchant Scrolls
• The first invited friend to reach level 5 will be awarded 5 Big Potions of Rejuvenation, which restore their character’s HP and MP.

Entering a Gift Key: Gift Keys will be offered by participating websites starting this week. Upon entering a Gift Key, players will receive 5 Strength potions which temporarily increase their character’s movement and attack speed.

Levelling up: Upon reaching levels 5, 10 and 20, players will be automatically entered into a weekly prize draw. The draw will take place every Friday, and winning players will be announced on www.karosgame.com. The higher the level, the greater the prize!

• Level 5 (10 weekly winners):  an Amethyst, Diamond or Sapphire (depending on character’s class) giving a bonus when combined with an accessory
• Level 10 (4 weekly winners): 10 Weapon Enchant Scrolls and 10 Armor Enchant Scrolls  
• Level 20 (1 weekly winner): an Iron Wyvern, a Holy Creature piece of armor which serves as a mount in the game.

Guild building: The start of open beta will also kick off a month-long build-up exercise for guilds that will run through the 31st of December. Guilds meeting the target criteria on the 31st will receive exciting prize bundles — more details coming soon!

It seems we here at MMOCrunch are getting into the holiday season early as we have another closed beta key giveaway today, this time for Karos Online.  MMOCrunch has been given 100 Karos Online Closed Beta keys and they will be given out on a first come first server basis.

Karos Online is a free to play fantasy MMORPG by Korean developer Galaxy Gate.  The third and final round of closed beta is set to begin on Nov 26th and will only last a few days.

To obtain your key simply reply to this post with a valid email address.

• Start Date: Nov 26st, 2009
• Start Time: 10 pm EST
• End Date: Nov 28th, 2009 (10pm EST)

The final closed beta will include:

- High level content preview : all characters will reach high level from the start
- Introduction of a new class : the Sorceress
- Two guild PvP Mine Takeover events – Character names reservation for Open Beta and launch

To signup for the beta once you have a key, please go to http://www.karosgame.com

Today NHN Corp announced that Karos Online open beta will begin on Dec 4th.   Karos Online is a free to play fantasy MMORPG that is currently in closed beta that will end Nov 28th.  In the final two days of the close beta, beta testers will get to experience high-level content and reserve their characters’ names for use in open beta.

Especially for the final closed beta event, new characters will come fully-equipped with gear and items to support high-level play, and the rate of experience gain has been dramatically increased so that players can reach a level cap of 44 almost immediately. In addition, the names of characters created during the last closed beta event will be linked to the testers’ accounts for use in open beta and launch (the characters themselves will be wiped after the event). ”In the previous Karos Online closed beta weekends, players were able to try early levelling and the starter content of the game,” said Heejin Jeong, Senior Overseas Sales Manager at NHN Corporation. “The third event offers the opportunity to play as a much more powerful character, and there will be new features available this time that players haven’t seen before, including new monsters, weapons and Holy Creatures. This will be the last closed beta event for Karos Online, we think it’s going to be a lot of fun and we hope to see a lot of testers return to help us celebrate the end of a very productive closed beta.” 

All up-to-date information about the game is available at www.karosgame.com. To apply for beta participation, simply create an account at www.karosgame.com and click ‘Apply Now’. If you have been accepted into a previous beta event, you will receive instructions two to three days before the event begins (there is no need to re-apply).